Utilization of the World Wide Web, i.e., a global hypermedia document that resides on and stretches across most of the Internet, commonly involves a web browser interface program, such as Netscape Navigator, to access hypermedia documents, commonly referred to as web pages. Sites on the Internet are chosen by a user usually by entering a site address, i.e., a URL (uniform resource locator), or by selecting a link on a displayed web page of a current site. A typical arrangement for such utilization is illustrated by the block diagram of FIG. 1. A user on a client computer system 10 addresses a web site hosted by a remote server system 12. The remote server 12 accesses the chosen web site by locating a local file 14 storing the data for the addressed web site. The remote server 12 then transfers the data for the website to the client system 10. With the World Wide Web utilizing a standard protocol, e.g., HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), for transferring information across the Internet and web software following this protocol, information transfer occurs between the remote server 12 and client system 10.
During the process of requesting a site and transferring data, the client system 10 waits. Unfortunately when the site being accessed contains large image files, the wait for a full data transfer can become excessive. Also, in certain situations, such as international web sites or sites with server problems, data transfer is slow. The time wasted waiting is not only inconvenient to the user, but may be costly for those situations in which users pay for use of the Internet based on the length of connection time.
Usual attempts to end the delay involve the selection of a stop transfer function, e.g., selection of a stop button icon in the web browser. While the delay is ended, the selection of the stop function completely ends data transfer, thus stopping not only a large image transfer but the transfer of text information in the information stream from the server as well. Alternatively, the user can choose to speed up transfer by switching to a text only, ASCII version for the browser interface. Of course, the elimination of images from the interface defeats the purpose of the having a graphical browser for the web pages and limits the depth of the information provided.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system that allows more flexible and convenient control over the transfer of data, including image data, between client and server systems on the Internet.